Arun Durvasula, PhD
Principal Investigator
Arun received his B.S. in Biotechnology from UC Davis. He completed his PhD as a National Science Foundation Graduate Student Researcher at UCLA in Human Genetics in 2021. He then moved to Harvard University as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. In 2023, he began his current role as an Assistant Professor at USC in the Center for Genetic Epidemiology and the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences. He is broadly interested in the genetic basis of complex traits and the evolutionary forces that shape genetic variation.
Email: arun.durvasula@med.usc.edu
Chelsea Cataldo-Ramirez, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Chelsea received her BA in Anthropology (and minor in Art History) at UCLA, followed by a MS in Forensic and Biological Anthropology at Mercyhurst University. Her MS research focused on methodological improvements in population affinity assessments of human skeletal morphology. She then completed her MA and PhD in Biological Anthropology, under the co-mentorship of Tim Weaver and Brenna Henn at UC Davis. While at UCD, her research expanded beyond the domain of applied forensic sciences and took on a multidisciplinary form to better understand the evolution of modern human complex traits, primarily in relation to skeletal variation. In 2024, she joined the Durvasula Lab as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Broadly, she is interested in the genetic architecture underlying skeletal phenotypes, socio-environmental factors that influence systemic health, and emphasizing research for the benefit of typically excluded populations.
Natalie Fortunato
Undergraduate Student in Quantitative and Computational Biology
I am interested in population genetics and specifically linkage disequilibrium. In this lab I hope to study an additional migration wave resulting in the Australasian genetic component (PopY) found exclusively in present-day Amazonian populations. I also conduct outside research on modeling the signaling patterns of B. subtillis biofilms.
Jinyu Zhang
Master’s Student in Biostatistics
I am interested in understanding how genetic factors influence human health. I am working on leveraging statistical techniques to understand the extent to which context specificity contributes to the development of diseases.